Louis Ck

The last time Louis C.K. was at the Emmys was over a decade ago, and even though he took home an award, he wasn't in the limelight. "I was a writer on 'The Chris Rock Show' ... and I was in this spot, behind 10 other people," the comedian said backstage in front of a room full of reporters after winning two awards -- one for comedy writing on "Louie" and the other for writing on his stand-up special. One of the backstage journalists asked Louis C.K. why he thinks his latest television show has resonated with viewers more than his previous efforts, including the short-lived "Lucky Louie.

If you like your “Saturday Night Live” episodes weird and a little bit gross, then last night's installment was for you. Host Louis CK brought his own brand of humor to the show, that is say, a mix of anarchic, perverted and the tiniest bit sweet, wrapped up in the guise of a regular middle-aged guy. The highlight of the episode was CK's monologue, where he went from riffing on how irritating First World people who claim to be “starving”...

In a strong episode hosted by comedian Louis C.K., “SNL” helped lighten the post-Sandy mood but without being too heavy-handed or comparing the storm to Sept. 11 (as Mayor Michael Bloomberg did, to some criticism, when attempting to keep the New York City marathon from being canceled). C.K. did address the seriousness of the storm damage, however, in a separate letter to his fans sent prior to the show. The cold open gently teased the mayor, played by Fred Armisen, as he addressed the city and pointed out that his ban on giant sugary sodas probably prevented the deaths of many obese New Yorkers who would have otherwise floated down the Hudson River.

This time last year, while Bradley Cooper was making the rounds for his Oscar-nominated lead actor turn in David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook," he was also getting ready to get back in the ring with Russell for "American Hustle. " The day after the Oscars, Cooper flew to Boston to begin work on the con artist comedy, in which he plays a live-wire FBI agent trying to make a name for himself with the Abscam sting operation. In a video interview, he spoke to The Envelope about his Oscar-nominated supporting role.

Say what you will about Tim Heidecker's career - and many do - but predictable he isn't. For nearly a decade, the 36-year-old has been practicing his brand of anti-comedy on the Web, on Adult Swim ("Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job," with cohort Eric Wareham) and, lately, on the movie screen. For some, Heidecker's work is a brilliant deconstruction of comedy itself, every squirmy moment a wake-up call to a lazy late-night establishment. For others, the term anti-comedy is a little too true to its name.

Louis C.K., the star and creative force behind FX's "Louie," feels bad for his unlucky-in-love alter ego. "I don't know what's going to happen to that guy," the actor-comedian said when asked during a Television Critics' Assn. session to promote "Louie" if the lead character would ever find a soul mate. Said C.K., "I've had so much better luck than him. I'm starting to feel a little bad for him. Maybe in Season 4 I'll park him with a girlfriend, let him fail at having a relationship.: FX announced that it had just renewed the series, which revolves around a hapless stand-up comic, for a fourth season.

NEW YORK--Lena Dunham found her show "Girls" under criticism earlier this year for an absence of minority characters. The controversy only mushroomed after, in an apparent bid to make light of the issue, "Girls" writer Lesley Arfin tweeted sarcastically that she didn't think "Precious" offered a representation of her either. At an event Sunday hosted by the New Yorker and its TV critic Emily Nussbaum, Dunham offered some context on the incident. After saying that Arfin had actually no longer worked on the show at the time she sent the tweet, Dunham elaborated on what was happening on the "Girls" set during the controversy.

The Directors Guild of America on Wednesday announced nominees in the television categories of the annual DGA Awards, recognizing the behind-the-scenes talent of shows including "Mad Men" and "Homeland" as well as familiar faces such as Lena Dunham, Louis C.K. and Bryan Cranston. In the drama category, two "Homeland" directors picked up nominations: Michael Cuesta for the second season finale and Leslie Linka Glatter for the episode "Q&A. " Jennifer Getzinger was nominated for "Mad Men's" fifth-season premiere, "A Little Kiss," while Rian Johnson and Greg Mottola -- both directors best known for their film work -- earned nods for "Breaking Bad" and "The Newsroom," respectively.

Louis C.K.(a transliteration of his Hungarian surname, Szekely), a divorced stand-up comedian with two daughters, recently returned to the small screen with the third season of the edgy eponymous FX comedy series he writes, stars in and directs. "Louie," also about a divorced stand-up comedian with two daughters, has been a critics' darling since its 2010 debut. Since "Louie" mines your life for material, I gather that one thing you're thinking a lot about these days is dating and gender roles.

This time last year, Bradley Cooper was promoting his Oscar-nominated turn in David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" while preparing to make another movie with the director. The day after the Oscars, Cooper flew to Boston to begin pre-production on "American Hustle," and here we are again, talking about another great Russell film featuring a cast - Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner - playing roles unlike anything we've seen them do before.

FX wants to stay in the Louis C.K. business for awhile. The production arm of FX Networks has signed a development deal with C.K., star of the critically acclaimed dark comedy "Louie. " C.K., through his production company Pig Newton, has agreed to develop and produce pilots for FX Networks that the comedian would executive produce. C.K. also has the option to write as well as direct any of the projects. Besides FX, FX Networks also recently launched a spinoff channel FXX that is looking for fresh content.

To comemmorate the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's delivery of the Gettysburg Address, Ken Burns and PBS have teamed up to channel your fifth-grade social studies teacher and challenge Americans everywhere to memorize and recite that famous speech upon the dedication of a soldiers' cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa. In order to raise awareness of the "Learn the Address" campaign, launched just ahead of the anniversary on Nov. 19, Burns recorded celebrities...

Plenty of comedians crack jokes about the role of technology in contemporary life, but leave it to Louis C.K. to lace the observational humor with a little existential dread. On Thursday's "Conan," the multi-hyphenate actor-writer-director-producer-editor, who's up for approximately a million Emmys on Sunday night, explained why he won't let his young daughters have cellphones, despite their constant begging. "I'm not there to make them happy," he said defiantly.

Louis C.K. railed against smartphones on Thursday's “Conan,” arguing that our mobile devices are getting in the way of our capacity to feel emotion and empathy. Sure, we may text our friends more than we may ever have called them in the pre-smartphone era, but are we really connecting? Or have we evolved into a culture that uses smartphones to prevent us from feeling? For all of the possibilities that smartphones open up, like pretty spectacular medical advancements and Amber text alerts , there is the flipside reality, one that shows the destructive cultural impact of mobile devices.

Fans of Louis C.K. know the comedian has a morose streak, but Tuesday on “The Late Show” he took this dark tendency to a new extreme, sharing with David Letterman a bummer of a story about finding a dead body in the East River. It was quite a departure from the innocuous canned anecdotes that are the norm on late night -- perhaps too much of a departure for some -- but it was entirely in keeping with C.K.'s melancholy brand of humor. As the star, who's nominated for a slew of Emmys for his FX series “Louie” and plays a cheater in Woody Allen's “Blue Jasmine,” explained, he was out for a ride around Manhattan on his boat recently when the Coast Guard issued an alert to be on the lookout for a body south of the Queensborough Bridge -- precisely where he happened to be at the time.

When L.A. comedian Tig Notaro announced on the stage at Largo that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer, she set the comedy world abuzz, notably Louis C.K., who was in the audience that August night and called the set one of the most powerful he's seen in his career. Now Notaro has announced that the complete 30-minute performance will make up her second album, “Live,” and that C.K. will release it on his website Friday, Oct. 5 as a $5 download. During the Aug. 3 performance at Largo, Notaro told her audience that she'd been diagnosed with stage 2 bilateral breast cancer.

Comic Tig Notaro will publish a collection of humorous, autobiographical essays with Ecco in 2015, the publisher announced Tuesday. Notaro , who has had her own 30-minute special on Comedy Central, has written for TV, has been heard on "This American Life" and regularly appeared on the full gamut of late-night shows, did a set at Largo in August that brought her special attention. Scheduled to appear for her monthly show at Largo with Louis CK as a special guest, Notaro first went to a doctor's appointment.

It is heartening in a way that perhaps the biggest comic in America - in a sense of cultural import if not necessarily in income, though he is obviously doing well there too - is a doughy, bald man of 45. It's heartening both from the aspect of one's own advancing age and as notice that kids these days are not entirely consumed with things made in their own image. That experience counts for something is an explicitly stated theme of Louis C.K.'s new concert special, "Oh My God," which premieres Saturday on HBO: Real wisdom is a thing that only time can earn, he says.

"Louis C.K.: Oh My God" (premieres Saturday, HBO) . Funny, deep and unsparing of himself, Louis C.K. is arguably the most important comic going, both for his adventures in form -- his FX series "Louie," now on hiatus between its third and fourth seasons, grafts art film, standup and situation comedy -- and his experiments in business. He earned more than $1 million by selling unrestricted-use downloads of his 2011 "Live at the Beacon Theater" straight to fans at $5 a pop; similarly he sold tickets to the tour during which "Oh My God" was taped/filmed/recorded directly through his website, cutting out ticket agency fees and keeping prices low. (One hundred thousand tickets were sold, at $45 per, in 45 hours.)